Misery loves company among golf course superintendents.
If one course develops a turfgrass problem, its superintendent can always call one of his or her peers to find a potential answer. In fact, many times most courses are suffering from similar problems during droughts or rainy periods.
Mike Lee doesn't have that luxury when he has a problem with the fairways at Whistling Straits, the site of next month's PGA Championship.
The fairways' primary grass is fescue, which is a rarity on golf courses. Most fairways on new courses are Bentgrass.
"It's tricky," said Lee, the manager for all four Kohler Co. golf courses. He pointed out that the few people who are knowledgeable about using fescue grass on fairways usually have sand-based soil. The Straits' soil is clay-based.
"You see fescue growing everywhere and it's beautiful when it's left uncut, so wisps of it wave back and forth in the wind," added Lee, a Madison native and University of Wisconsin graduate. "But it's not as easy to keep alive when cut at the height of a fairway at a course where a major golf championship will be held."
Thus, the 39-year-old Lee said maintaining the Straits' fescue fairways has been his largest agronomic challenge.
"That's what I went to school for. It's the largest challenge of just fundamental agronomics. Root zones, plants adaptability," he said. "There are so many areas of being a superintendent where you deal with non-agronomic issues like how bunkers play and construction processes. This is about growing grass, and it's been my area of greatest pride and greatest frustration."
The toughest part of dealing with fescue in the fairways is its adaptability in heavy soils. "It loves well-drained soils and not all of our soils are well-drained so it thins out," said Lee, who dumped tons of sand on the fairways last summer to prepare them for the PGA.
"So keeping it growing without over-fertilizing is the greatest challenge," he added. "The course is under continued wear and tear and it has to replace itself. Fescue grows at a third of a rate as Bentgrass. So you dig deep in your bag of tricks to keep it growing."
As it turns out, the benefits of fescue fairways may outweigh the problems. For instance, it is very disease-resistant. It also goes dormant during droughts.
"When you look at the older homes where the owners never water their lawns in the summertime, the grass is all fescue," Lee said. "It's the only grass that makes it through the six-week drought or the three-week drought we have every year. It goes dormant."
On the other hand, Bentgrass fairways die if they don't get water during droughts.
"Nothing will come back. It's like taking a tree and cutting the trunk off. You have to resod or reseed," he said. "Fescue fairways will turn yellow and thin out if you don't water it. But it will green up as soon as it rains and you fertilize it just like that yard in front of that old house that was built in the 1920s in Madison."
Fescue fairways also are generally hard and balls roll farther than most Bentgrass fairways. That explains why the Straits can play more than 7,500 yards long and could have as many as three par-4s that are 500 yards or longer.
Lee said its great benefit to golfers might be how the ball sits up on the short grass vs. how it gets snarled when the fescue is at the height of the rough.
"I'm really excited to see how the players play on this fescue and see how they react to it," Lee said. "It's so easy to get their club through there when it's mowed to a half-inch or maybe less. We had it mowed down to half an inch for two months last year. We know the fescue can handle it.
"So I think they're going to rave about it because it doesn't grab your club."
But first, they have to hit the fairways with their tee shots. Several pro golfers have gone public with their concern about the narrow width of the fairways.
That has nothing to do with the fescue. And if the fairways are dry, it will be that much harder to keep the ball on the short grass.
"There's no reason it's going to be a soft golf course unless Mother Nature dictates it that way," Lee said. "There's sand on the fairways. We top-dressed at a minimum an inch of sand, which dries out the top. Underneath is a good loam soil, well-drained internally. Not like sand, though. We certainly don't want to pretend it's sand. It will be dry as long as we don't get rain."
Source: The Capital Times